Christ on the Cross: both God and man?

[ccravens]

Forgive my ignorance on the subject. I heard a young preacher say in the middle of his sermon that Christ on the cross suffered and died not as the God-man, but only as man. God could never suffer and die, thus Christ's suffereing and death were soley accomplished by His human nature. I had always believed that if Christ didn't suffer and die as the God-man, that we would still be in our sins.

Please tell me if you believe I have this incorrect. I know God cannot suffer and die, but I also believe that if he was not God in His suffering and death, then He could not have been the propitiation our sins. A man cannnot take away the sins of mankind, only the perfect God-man could do so.

Please forgive my muddled wording and thinking on this issue. I'd really like to know the scriptural basis for each position. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Blood-Bought Pilgrim]

Others can explain with more nuance than I can, but I will say I that to say Christ did not suffer and die as the God-man is fundamentally wrong and a significant enough error that the young preacher you mention needs to be corrected. Christ suffered according to his human nature, but he did so as the God-man. He was no less one unitary person with two natures on the cross than at any other time after the incarnation.

To say he only suffered as a human seems to open the door to some kind of adoptionism in which the divine nature can abandon the human nature temporarily.

 

[Charles Johnson]

The problem here is the ambiguity of the term "as."

What does it mean to suffer and die "as"? Is "as" in a nature? (E.g. suffering "as a man") Possessing a nature? On account of something? (E.g. Christ suffered "as our mediator") With the power or virtue of a nature? (E.g. "As God, Christ's sacrifice is of infinite value") Being accused and condemned for something? (E.g. suffering "as a criminal" or "as a thief")

Christ suffered and died in his human nature, and not in his divine nature.

But the Christ that suffered and died in his human nature is both God and man.

The Son of God died on the cross.

"As" is too ambiguous to make it clear what we're affirming or denying.

 

[erickinho1bra]

"That's Nestorianism, Patrick!" - LutheranSatire

 

[Blood-Bought Pilgrim]

An additional thought-- while it is true we can make distinctions about the properties of the natures of Christ (e.g. the human nature can suffer, the divine nature cannot), we must recognize that Scripture tends toward the opposite pole of assigning what is proper to one of Christ's natures to the other (e.g. "the blood of God"). We should be careful to follow this emphasis on the true unity of the person of Christ in the way we teach. Yes the natures are distinct, but they are never separate.

 

[Jack K]

The divine or human nature doesn't do anything. Jesus, the whole person, acts and does things. So the person, Jesus, suffered and died on the cross. That person is both God and a man.

It's true that God cannot die. So sometimes we clarify by saying that Jesus died according to his human nature (or some similar phrase). But notice that it's still Jesus (the person) who died and accomplished salvation, not the nature.

You're absolutely right that the death on the cross (along with other acts of salvation) had to be accomplished by someone who is not just a man but also is God. Only a sacrifice of infinite value could pay for our sin. Only God could go through that eternal curse-bearing and come back out of it alive and victorious, ending it instead of being consumed by it. And we could go on.

I find the two-natures-one-person of Christ to be a more difficult topic than understanding and explaining the Trinity, so you should extend some grace to the young preacher. He probably read or heard something that wasn't precise enough, or he took it the wrong way. There's an unhappy tendency among evangelicals who are trying to understand the matter to separate what Christ did as a man from what he did as God. It usually isn't helpful and reduces our wonder at Christ, the God-man.

I teach my students that when they think about anything Jesus did, the best answer to the question, "Did a man do that, or did God do that?" is going to be "Yes. Both." Did a man walk on water? Yes. Be amazed at the miracle! Did God walk on water? Yes. Be amazed that he would come and do that and then hop into the boat to comfort his faith-poor disciples. It's double amazement. Double glory. Always so much more to see.

 

[Alexander Suarez]

Good day Chris,

Perhaps these quotations from our Reformed heritage may further help meditating upon the matter.


Westminster Larger Catechism Q & A 40:

Q. 40. Why was it requisite that the Mediator should be God and man in one person?
A. It was requisite that the Mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person.

Peter Van Mastricht in Theoretical-Practical Theology Book Five, Chapter 12, XI:

". . . each nature bestowed its own part to Christ's sufferings: while the human nature alone sustained and suffered them (since passive potency does not occur in the divine nature, Mal. 3:6; James 1:17; and much less death, because the divine nature is incorruptible, Rom. 1:23; 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16), the divine nature furnished to his sufferings an infinite weight, value, and price, so that they were God's sufferings (Acts 20:28), and the blood of the Son of God (1 John 1:7), suited to cleanse us from all sin."

Theoretical-Practical Theology Book Five, Chapter 12, XXIII:

". . . it is asked whether he endured death as the God-man. The Nestorians, because they separated the natures in Christ, stated that he endured death only as man, for which reason there was in their mouths, "Boast not, O Jew, for you have not slain God, but man." On the contrary, the Eutychians, who taught a confusion of the natures, thought that he suffered as much in the divine nature as in the human nature, because from the confusion of the two natures, they said that one nature had emerged. The papists, because they teach that he is Mediator only according to the human nature, in agreement with Francesco Stancaro, state that he only suffered as a man. The Socinians agree with them, because they do no accept the Mediator's divine nature. The Lutherans, since they want the divine nature to have been communicated to the human nature through the hypostatic union, assert that God - properly and not figuratively, and thus the very divine nature - suffered for us. With them the Flemish Anabaptists agree, at least in thesis, because they think that Christ's human nature, having been drawn down from heaven or born from the divine substance, is divine.

The Reformed, because they state that Christ is the Mediator according to both natures, as we have taught . . . and vindicated . . . affirm that he died as the God-man, according to both natures, in the sense and by those reasons which adduced [in the above quotation - Book Five, Chapter 12, XI] . . . "